Coronavirus statement

With the Coronavirus outbreak affecting our personal lives and our business, everyone needs to look at how to reduce its spread and how together we can support the local community. 

As with most crises, we know that people who are vulnerable and marginalised are often affected the most. At IKEA Social Entrepreneurship we partner and do business with social enterprises that support these people and communities and we will continue to do so. 

We are in discussion with our NGO partners to see if any adaptions to the programmes we have together are required to mitigate any new needs. For our partners who we do business with, we follow the same guidance as the entire IKEA supply chain and the overall actions taken towards suppliers. 

We understand that many social enterprises are small and that in some countries the support available might not fit. So we are working hard to understand the situation and get an overview of where different types of support can be sourced from. Below are some links of support available to social enterprises. We will update this regularly:

• Pioneerspost for a list of organisations that can help social enterprises and other social sector organisations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship resources on business resilience and disaster recovery.
• Duke Fuqua #COVID19 Capital Relief has a searchable list of capital resources available. 
• Business Fights Poverty This COVID-19 response Framework has practical guidance on how businesses can support the most vulnerable in their value chains and beyond

What our partners are doing

Below are some great examples of how a number of our partners are switching focus and supporting the crises responses: 

• Ashoka Fellows and communities worldwide are solving challenges in our global crisis.
• Rangsutra artisans in Bikaner, India are switching production lines to create masks. 
• Yunus Social Business hosted a Business as Unusual event which highlighted the importance of building the resilient businesses of the future.

Helping the communities most in need 

A series of wide-ranging commitments have been announced by IKEA retail markets to help protect the health and livelihoods of those affected by the Coronavirus pandemic, including communities, customers, co-workers and its partners.